[See Last Year's Countdown]

Now that I’ve absorbed the music I bought with Christmas gift cards, I am ready to anoint my top 40 songs of 2011. As you know, this countdown is mandated by my DNA, so I am delighted to once again fulfill my genetic destiny.

2011 delivered a lot of great ballads, but curiously, the first leg of the countdown is entirely uptempo. So think of this as your dance warmup, y’all! Headbands and torn sweatshirts… activate!

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My official music round up will come in early January, after I sort through the albums I get for Christmas. For now, though, I have call your attention to a pair of phenomenal new songs and one extremely disappointing single from a very talented star.

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Young Adult was a happy upheaval of my presumed taste in movies. Typically, I think of myself as someone who dislikes bone-deep cynicism, who finds it cheap and lazy. Yet the cynicism in Young Adult, which is directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, manages to be insightful, humane, and comic in both the structural and amusing senses.

I know, right? How’d that happen?

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Over at Monkey See, I just explained why I’m all in on the Rock of Ages trailer. I truly believe this is going to be an amazing movie. The wigs alone will be worth the price of popcorn.

After you’ve read my write-up, I’d love to know what you think? Are you in or out?

So… The Artist: It’s a lovely silent movie about silent movies themselves, following George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a superstar who’s distressed to realize he has no place in the emerging talkie world. As it tells this story—which also includes the meteoric rise of Valentin’s costar Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo)—it delivers some of the most imaginative and delightful scenes I’ve witnessed in ages. And because The Artist more or less follows the conventions of old silent films, it creates these moments with real-world props and ingenuity. The lack of CGI makes this film feel dazzlingly human in its magic, and that is wonderful to behold.

Early in the film, for instance, Peppy is still just a chorus girl trying to get a break. On the set of George’s latest film, she overhears some music and starts jitterbugging with abandon. (As you do.) From across the soundstage, George sees her dancing… or rather, he sees her legs. Peppy is behind a piece of scenery being wrangled by two stagehands, and as they lift it off the ground, they reveal her dancing feet, then her dancing ankles, then her dancing calves. Before he sees the rest of her, George runs up and starts matching Peppy’s steps, so we see a man dancing in perfect time with a pair of legs. It’s delightful.

And honestly, I think this scene is even more satisfying because it comes in a silent film. With only a score playing, and no “real-world sounds” to distract me, I was able to focus completely on the dancing. I was able to lose myself in it.

By the end of The Artist—which is the first silent film I’ve ever seen in a theater and one of maybe five I’ve seen in my entire life—I was intensely grateful for the special focus that soundlessness demands. I couldn’t look away from the movie for a moment because there was no chance I could follow along just by listening to dialogue as I rustled around in my backpack for a water bottle. By demanding so much of my attention, the movie created a more intimate connection, and I can’t remember the last time the act of watching a film felt so personal.

That’s interesting, since this connection is ostensibly created by 3D effects, but with a few exceptions (Avatar, Up, etc.) 3D rarely excites me. I guess my “poor theater” aesthetic has reared its head again, reminding me that I get transported further when the art I’m watching is working with less, not more.

There was never a chance I was going to enjoy the movie Shame, but I was hoping I’d at least respect it.

In case you haven’t heard, Shame is the NC-17 tale of Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), a sex addict who humps his way through an emotionally disconnected life in New York City. (And I do mean humps. We see loads of graphic sex and plenty of The Fassbender Member.) In the midst of his humpitude—which involves as much porn and naughty chatroom behavior as actual sex—Brandon’s sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) arrives. She’s also prone to poor sexual choices, and she blends them with emotional need and suicidal tendencies. Her crazy plus Brandon’s crazy leads to High Drama and a series of breakdowns that make Brandon face the fact that he’s screwed up.

Spiritually and philosophically, I almost always reject stories like these, because I do not see meaninglessness or sadness or chaos everywhere I go. Do all these things exist? Yes. Have I been sad and hopeless? Of course. But those feelings are small holes in the garment of my life. For the most part, the seams are in tact. I know that makes me privileged, and I’m grateful.

And that’s why I’m predisposed to movies like Beginners or plays like Hedda Gabler or writers like Thornton Wilder and Annie Dillard and Walt Whitman. All these works and people see the darkness and pull light from it anyway. They don’t deny despair, but they don’t suggest there’s nothing else.

So a movie like Shame, which begins with a man in misery and ends with him facing misery of a different kind, faces a disadvantage with me. But I’m not saying it has no shot. No Country for Old Men is pretty fucking bleak—much more bleak than Shame, actually—but I love the book and the film. Breaking Bad is shot through with evil and desperation, and it’s one of my top three TV series of all time.

Shame, however, is not sophisticated enough to win me over. Though people I respect have enjoyed it, all I see is an insultingly shallow story filled with ham-handed pretension.

(Major spoilers ahead)

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This week, two tiny tempests have been created by two holiday carols, and both dustups teach the same lesson.

On Monday, news broke that a music teacher at a Michigan elementary school had stripped the word “gay” from “Deck the Halls.” Instead, she had her students sing “don we now our BRIGHT apparel.” (She apparently made this decision because students kept snickering at the word “gay.”)

By Tuesday,the word was back in, amid frustrations from parents about the “inappropriate” substitution and a reminder from the school’s principal that the school’s anti-discrimination policy includes LGBT protections.

Meanwhile, the blog of the excellent, feminist-leaning magazine Bitch revived the debate about whether “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is “rapey” in its depiction of a man and woman deciding if they’re going to stay in on a cold night and have sex. This debate is new to me, but apparently, it’s been going on for a while, and as writer Kelsey Wallace, points out, it largely centers on the moment when the (traditionally) female singer coos, “Say, what’s in this drink?” For some, this lyric implies that the woman has been drugged so that she can’t possibly leave the man’s house.

The lively discussion on Wallace’s post included a link to a 2010 blog post for Persephone Magazine that rebukes the “rapey” reading of that line. The author writes, “‘Say, what’s in this drink’ is a well-used phrase that was common in movies of the time period and isn’t really used in the same manner any longer. The phrase generally referred to someone saying or doing something they thought they wouldn’t in normal circumstances; it’s a nod to the idea that alcohol is ‘making’ them do something unusual. But the joke is almost always that there is nothing in the drink. The drink is the excuse.”

And that’s where the two stories overlap. In both cases, a 2011 sensibility is being used to understand work from a different cultural era. Little kids are laughing at the implied homosexuality of “gay apparel,” and critics are saying there are roofies in the drink.

What’s more, people in both cases are suggesting that the best way to deal with these cultural disconnections is to eliminate the offending phrases. The teacher cut the word “gay” from “Deck the Halls”. Kelsey Wallace ends her post by saying shopping malls should stop playing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” altogether.

Granted, the teacher put the word back in the song and plenty of the blog’s commenters defended “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Given the context of both the phrases, I’d say that’s the right call. Rather than rewriting a standard carol, teachers can tell their students that “gay” means more than one thing. Rather than banning a chestnut, critics can dig deeply into the context of the line that bothers them. If they still object to the song, then so be it, but at least they can ground their opinion in a larger understanding of how the tune was intended. (This is essentially what Wallace does in the comments section beneath her post.)

But for me, this entire situation is a reminder that when you’re having a knee-jerk reaction to something that offends or frustrates you, looking for context is very hard. It’s much easier to just go ahead and follow your first instinct. It’s much easier to justify banning the thing that bothers you than to really explore it.

As someone with a left-leaning bias, I often see misogynist and/or racist and/or homophobic subtexts in things. I typically stand by of those readings, but as the 2011 Carol Wars demonstrate, it’s never bad to step back, take a breath, and investigate the things that irk or offend. There might be calmer, gentler, or more-informed perspectives just waiting to be discovered. Those perspectives don’t have to sabotage our critical responses to culture. They can simply make them more nuanced and satisfying.

This weekend, the New York Times Magazine will publish its Hollywood Issue, and the content went online early this morning. I’m pleased to say that I’m part of a fun “year in movies” feature about the cinematic moments and trends that will likely be overlooked by the rest of the punditry.

My section is dubbed “Tomorrow’s Iconic Villain Today,” and it celebrates Cate Blanchett’s nasty turn as Marissa Wiegler in Hanna, a brilliant movie that’s still in my top three for entire year.

The rest of the package is fantastic, and I’m tickled to be included.

"Justin, you're old enough to look at this, right?"

I took deep breaths, counted to ten, and even slept on it… and  Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey’s remake of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” still makes me angry. So won’t you join me as I process these turbulent feelings?

I’ve been aware of the duet for several months, but I didn’t realize it was such an unholy beast until Linda Holmes playfully deconstructed its music video at Monkey See. She nails the cheap consumerism and icky sexuality on display, so I won’t rehash her points. I’m just adding one more grievance to her list.

Take a look and then join me in surveying the horror:

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Recently, my mom mailed me some odds and ends from my childhood—old photos, favorite books, bits of writing, etc.

Imagine my amazement when I uncovered “Cinderella in ’88,” a story I wrote in 1988 that is remarkably prescient about the person I would become. Apparently, my core interests and my love of camp were already cemented when I was nine years old.

After the jump, I am happy to present this story in full. If you are a television or film executive, please email me to discuss development deals.

Note: Punctuation and phrasing are recreated exactly as they appear on the print-out my mom saved.

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